My daily rants, hm, well, maybe not so much rants, more views or just playing devil's advocate. Oh yes, and some other stuff...that's all!

Thursday, February 08, 2007

About Friendship...

Today is shaping out to be an eventful one.

When I turned on my laptop this morning, the first thing I received was a lovely email from a friend, one of those virals that travel from emailbox to emailbox but one none-the-less that I welcomed.

It talked about the differences between a simple friend and a real friend. After reading that, I decided to return a few phone calls that I had been putting off! Now, I have excellent phone etiquette, if I should say so myself but this one to this person maybe I should have just skipped.

The conversation started off with the usual pleasantries, how you dey, what's up etc. Then we started talking about our individual business and how we needed more clients. Then she mentioned something to me that sounded hinky!

A little background about this friend, this friend is a self-proclaimed know-it-all! Nobody should dare disagree with her about anything, a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g! It must always be the way she wants it.

A little background about me, I am probably one of the most opinionated people you could ever meet! I hate to argue but I am very argumentative! I can sometimes be fickle but I count that as a plus because it allows me to be objective and see things from anothers perspective. There's more...!

We have had numerous situations like the one I am about to narrate and because of that I have reduced my interaction with her to occasional phone calls.

Anyway, back to the hinky thing! We are in a very competitive line of business so because of that fact people sometimes feel they need to come up with ingenious ways to bring in clients albeit somewhat sketchy and downright dubious. So when she mentioned this to me, I told her straight out that I thought it was something that would serve her best to steer clear off.

The shouting match ensued, picture two very loud, high-pitched voices going at it, neither one wanting to back down, not a very appealing sight. I made a comment that caused her to use the never in your life phrase back at me, which I found highly offensive!

Okay, you want to know what I said, right, I said this is why people can't talk to you, something to that effect and it set her off! The thing is I don't think it is what I said that upset her so much, but the fact that she has probably heard these same words from so many other people before that it struck an ugly nerve. Hey, if you hear it enough times then there's probably some truth in it. Two choices, you can try to change that very behaviour or brush it off and not let it upset you because you like the way you are just fine!

I tell you we went round and round in circles, I was highly irritated! I asked her if she considered me her friend, she said she could not say she did because bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. I told her that I thought that as her friend I could tell her things that a regular person couldn't without fear of offending her. That's what friends do!

All this started from me telling her that I did not think what she was engaging in was kosher and I did not think she should be in it! She wanted me to research it first before sounding off but my thing was that there are things one should not bother investigating on the merit of just hearing it sounds ridiculous.

I wish I could regurgitate that whole conversation so that you can see how much of a waste of time it was. I told her that when people say things to me that I don't like, I can decide to continue to know those people or walk away for good, hah, what a shock, we chose the latter!

Hey, que sera sera! We were, after all, just simple friends, no?

Anyway, what I want to hear from you, that is, if you care to share; are there limits or boundaries where friendship is concerned. If there are, should there be?